”You might be wondering how all these disparate elements and clashing tones could possibly work together. The answer is about as well as you think. One watches Emilia Pérez the way you’d stare at a duck-billed platypus or one of those exotic animals made up of mismatched parts that Robin Williams cited as proof that God gets stoned.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/31/2024
”IFFBoston program director Nancy Campbell and executive director Brian Tamm knew they wanted to do something big for the tenth annual Fall Focus. So, how big did they go? They’ve managed to fit 14 films into the festival’s five days, closing with a special 70mm screening of all 26 reels and 300 lbs. of The Brutalist, literally the most massive movie of the year.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/29/2024
”That is one nutty Vatican. But in retrospect, the rave reviews for Conclave are hardly a surprise. Being sequestered with a bunch of cantankerous celibates who dislike each other while trying to settle on the least objectionable option for everybody will be an extremely relatable experience for anyone who has ever voted in a film critics society meeting.” – North Shore Movies, 10/25/2024
”Hagiographic in a way that starts to feel unseemly, full of self-consciously mythic shots of Bruce backlit and slowly ascending stairwells and such while friends and colleagues tell us how great he is. More than once it reminded me of those old ‘Legends of Springsteen’ sketches on The Ben Stiller Show. Surely they could have done better than this.” – North Shore Movies, 10/25/2024
”Sean Baker’s Anora is the best American film of the year so far. It’s also the funniest — a soaring, generous comedy about transactional relationships and the class divide. What starts as a Cinderella story in stiletto heels becomes a bawdy, up-all-night farce. With her crack comic timing and air raid siren of a voice, Madison is like Jean Arthur in a thong.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/24/2024
”Not even your most sophisticated home entertainment system can replicate the communal feeling of a whole room full of strangers shrieking and screaming at the same time. There are more than 40 frightening films showing at Boston area indie theaters over the 10 days between now and Halloween. Here are a handful of highlights.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/21/2024
“The world doesn’t want Norman to get well. Characters constantly taunt this sick man as if trying to bait him into living down to their worst expectations. By flipping our perspective to see one of film history’s most famous monsters as a tortured protagonist more sinned against than sinning, Psycho II asks us why we come to see movies like this in the first place.” – Crooked Marquee, 10/18/2024
“A breathless sprint of ‘print the legend’ falsifications, harmless fibs and outright smears. That Reitman would resort to shitting on actual mavericks George Carlin and Jim Henson while spit-shining the legend of a middlebrow mogul like Lorne Michaels should be no surprise coming from modern cinema’s most obsequious company man. He’s a natural born suit.” – North Shore Movies, 10/12/2024
”This was De Palma’s Godard era, shortly before he pledged allegiance to Alfred Hitchcock. But despite the blackout sketch structure and improv comedy hijinks, Hi Mom! is unmistakably a Brian De Palma picture: endlessly self-reflexive, obsessed with ways of watching and being watched, always implicating the audience in the action with a wicked cackle.” – Crooked Marquee, 10/11/2024
”One can admire aspects of Abbasi’s film while wondering who exactly it’s supposed to be for. Trump’s supporters don’t want to see him portrayed this way, while the rest of us have grown so incredibly sick and tired of this man who has occupied such an outsized space in our daily lives for nearly a decade, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go see a movie about him.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/10/2024
SPLICED PERSONALITY 